Aaron Douglas, born in Kansas in 1899, became one of the leading visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance and is often referred to as the "father of African-American Art." Douglas was known for his murals, landscapes, black & white drawings, and portraits. His illustrations also appeared in books by Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes, and on the covers of Vanity Fair. Artist and African-American art scholar David C. Driskell said of Douglas: "Douglas is the leading painter of the [Harlem] Renaissance movement. A pioneering Africanist, he accepted the legacy of the ancestral arts of Africa and developed his own original style, geometric symbolism. At a time when it was unpopular to dignify the black image in white America, Douglas refused to compromise and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people." Douglas would later become the head of the art department at Fisk University. He died in 1979.

Horace Pippin, born in West Chester, Pa., in 1888, did not begin to paint in earnest until 1930 — after he lost the use of his right arm in World War I. The self-taught painter who drew on themes of slavery and segregation for his work. He died in 1946.

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Archibald Motley was a Harlem Renaissance painter, but he never lived in Harlem. Born in New Orleans in 1891, Motley spent most of his life in Chicago. Known for his crowd and nightclub paintings, which were heavily influenced by the jazz era, Motley was also inspired by the various skin tones of African Americans. He died in 1981.

Lois Mailou Jones was born in Boston in 1905, but it was the inspiration of the Harlem Renaissance, her studies in France, Haiti, where she settled in the 1950s, and her travels to Africa that informed her paintings.

Jones was one of the founding faculty members of the Howard University art department, and believed one of her greatest contributions to the art world was providing "proof of the talent of black artists." She died in 1998

Born in 1911, Romare Bearden was a political cartoonist, Negro League baseball player, songwriter, editor and writer, but what he's most known for are his collages and paintings. August Wilson said of Bearden, who inspired his play, The Piano Lesson: "What I saw was black life, presented on its own terms, on a grand and epic scale, with all its richness and fullness, in a language that was vibrant and which, made attendant to everyday life, ennobled it, affirmed its value, and exalted its presence… It defined not only the character of black American life, but also its conscience."

Bearden died in 1988.

I don't know much about art, so I'm not going to attempt to judge it. Yet, I like the idea of occasionally highlighting African American artists in these morning photo posts. First up is Clementine Hunter (1888-1988), a folk artist (apparently, people like to call her the "black Grandma Moses") that I have a particular amount of affection for because she was born and raised in my grandparents' hometown — Cane River, La. Most of her oil paintings depict her memories of a dying plantation life. She was the first African American artist to show at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and rose to national acclaim after Look magazine did a profile of her in 1953.

Inspired by my colleague Andrew Belonsky's sharing spirit today, I'm asking all of you visual artists, musicians, photographers, fashion designers, (short) fiction writers, poets, and filmmakers who would like a little more exposure (and knowing Stereohyped's readers, feedback) for your work to send me the goods! I'll pick out some of the best (and blog-friendly) submissions and post them. Email your creative masterpieces, along with a brief description of you and your art, to lauren AT stereohyped.com with the subject "Supporting the Arts."

It was back to the drawing board last month for sculptor Lei Yixin and the team charged with creating the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial statue after the Federal Arts Commission said that their depiction of MLK — with his arms cross and a stern look on his face — was too "confrontational" and recalled "a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries."

The team came back this week with a new version (on the far right), that pulls the granite forward a few inches. After the jump, see a photo of the face of the statue, which they altered by softening his brow and giving him a hint of a smile.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial statue that is set to take a place of prominence on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., has been plagued with controversy from its inception. Many people didn't like that a Chinese sculptor was commissioned to create the memorial. Others argued that that way of thinking was sort of contradictory to Martin Luther King's dream.

Now, a federal arts commission that has final approval over the memorial says that the statue is too "confrontational and that "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." Are they thinking of that statue of Saddam Hussein that was toppled over by U.S. troops a few years back? No one could mistake MLK for a ruler of a totalitarian state.

The executive architect of the memorial said that they were aiming for something that was a powerful yet reflective representation of MLK. He says its hard for him to understand where the criticism is coming from. [WP]

A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

Facts about Edmonia Lewis's early years are fuzzy. She was born some time in the 1840s to a mother who was a Chippewa Indian and a father who she described as a free black man from the West Indies. According to Edmonia, her real name was Wild Fire, given to her by her mother. As the story goes, her parents died when she was a young girl, and she lived among the Chippewa Indians. However, her wealthy brother, Samuel Lewis, said that he became her guardian after their parents died. He eventually arranged for her to attend Oberlin College, where there was a hotbed of abolitionist activity. While there, she was accused of poisoning two white female students, and was savagely beaten before her trial, at which she was represented by John Mercer Langston. After she was acquitted in 1862, many of her fellow classmates, most of them white, carried her from the courtroom on their shoulders.

Lewis left Oberlin before finishing her degree to study sculpting in Boston. She quickly found commercial success, and her earnings helped finance a trip to Italy, where she sculpted works with an abolitionist theme. Her masterwork, The Death of Cleopatra, is now on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Art. With her work, Lewis sought to dispel the myth that blacks had nothing to offer artistically and intellectually, and insisted on being photographed standing beside her work and explaining it extensively. The date of her death is unknown.

• Ne-Yo, who is currently suing R. Kelly over their tour-gone-wrong, is now rumored to be suing Beyonce over royalties for her song "Irreplaceable," which he wrote. [SOHH]

• South Carolina and its much-talked about statehouse grounds… All you can do is shake your head. [CT]

• Australia starts 'em young. [MHS]

• An annual African American art exhibit in Louisville shows shifting perceptions of black art and artists. [LCJ]